Private Eye plans to republish audio clips of a phone call that are at the centre of a dispute between Hackney council and independent community newspaper the Hackney Citizen.

The Eye will host the clips as an act of solidarity with the Citizen, which has been asked to remove them from its website by Hackney Council. Private Eye confirmed to Journalism.co.uk that the audio will be added to the website tomorrow.

Last week the Citizen reported that a Hackney Council employee incorrectly informed a caller that there was no Conservative party candidate standing in the Hackney Mayoral election.

The caller was the Conservative party candidate himself, Andrew Boff, who recorded the conversation. The audio of the call found its way to the Citizen, which published two audio clips of Boff's call to the council on its website.

In a letter to Keith Magnum, editor of the Citizen, from its legal and democratic services department, the council said it believed it was "unlawful for My Boff to disclose the recording to a third party without consent" and said failure to remove the audio from the site would result in the council seeking an injunction in the civil courts to get it taken down.

The Citizen has not taken down the audio, which it first published on 4 May, and is now attempting to raise funds to seek legal advice and fight any potential injunction sought by the council. "We take the view that it is in the public interest to disclose the way the Council was dealing with the issue, as evidenced by the audio clips," says the Citizen on its website.

In its Rotten Borough's section of its 14 May issue, Private Eye dismisses the council's privacy argument as "nonsense" and says the information recorded in the phonecall is clearly of public interest.

If the council proceed to seek an injunction and recovery of its legal costs in full from the community newspaper, as stated in the letter, "it would be a grave threat to the Citizen, which is run on a shoestring and does a great job with zero resources", says Private Eye.

A statement to Journalism.co.uk on Monday, Hackney Council reiterated its letter to the Citizen: "The council has taken this step due to concern about how a recording was made of a conversation with a junior staff member without their knowledge and then circulated without their consent. We have therefore asked that this recording be removed from the website concerned."